The IA40 is Madrona's annual list of the 40 most important private companies in applied AI, chosen by the investors who fund the category. More than 70 investors from firms like a16z, Greylock, and Kleiner Perkins nominated and voted on 340 companies, with PitchBook data folded in to keep the scoring honest.

Last year we made the list as an Early-stage company, up against startups that had raised under $50M. This year, after closing our Series B, we moved into the Mid-Stage bracket and landed at #9 alongside some of our trusted customers like Anthropic Cognition, and more. Annualized revenue is up 15x, and we've crossed one million people interviewed on the platform.

This one means something to us because of who's voting. IA40 investors write checks in this category for a living, so the list reflects who they think is actually building, not who's loudest about AI. We started Listen on the idea that big decisions should start with real people, not guesses. Landing on this list two years running, in two different brackets, tells us that idea is working at a scale investors take seriously.

Thank you to Madrona, AWS Startups, Microsoft, Google for Startups, NYSE, Delta Air Lines, and McKinsey & Company for running the program and for naming us again.

Thank you, too, to the teams at Microsoft, Sweetgreen, Simple Modern, and hundreds of other companies who run their research through Listen instead of guessing what their customers want.

The full 2026 IA40 list is live now.

See the full 2026 IA40 list.